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SYRIA BELIEVES IT needs just five years to restore the ancient ruins of Palmyra damaged by the Islamic State jihadist group.
“If we have UNESCO’s approval, we will need five years to restore the structures damaged or destroyed by IS,” the country’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP.
Archaeologists rushed to the site to assess the damage wreaked by the Islamic State group, after it was ousted by the Syrian army in a bloody battle over the wekend.
President Bashar al-Assad hailed the victory as “important” as Damascus reportedly dispatched experts to check the damage on the UNESCO world heritage site.
Much still in tact
An AFP correspondent inside Palmyra said some monuments, including the iconic Temple of Bel, lay in pieces almost a year after jihadists seized the site, but much of the ancient city was intact.
Residential neighbourhoods in the adjacent modern town, where 70,000 people lived before the war, were deserted and damage there was widespread, the correspondent said.
Syrian soldiers, pro-government militiamen and Russian fighters strolled among the ruins in awe after seizing the city on Sunday, while regime troops kicked around a football in the middle of a street.
The Islamic State group sparked a global outcry when they started destroying Palmyra’s treasured monuments, which they consider idolatrous, after taking the city in May 2015.
Syria’s antiquities chief said the priceless artefacts had survived better than feared from a campaign of destruction UNESCO described as a “war crime”.
“We were expecting the worst. But the landscape, in general, is in good shape,” Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP from Damascus.
We could have completely lost Palmyra… The joy I feel is indescribable.
‘Lost to science’
Historian of the ancient world Maurice Sartre told AFP:
One mustn’t forget that only around 15 to 20 percent of Palmyra had actually been excavated, and so there was an enormous amount yet to discover.
“All the tombs we hadn’t excavated and have now been totally pillaged are lost to science forever.”
IS had used Palmyra’s ancient theatre as a venue for public executions and also murdered the city’s 82-year-old former antiquities chief.
The Syrian army said the city would now serve as a base to “broaden operations” against IS, including in its stronghold of Raqa and Deir Ezzor further east.
At least 400 IS fighters were killed in the battle for the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. On the government side, 188 troops and militiamen were killed.
“That’s the heaviest losses that IS has sustained in a single battle since its creation” in 2013, the director of the Britain-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
The ancient city, northeast of Damascus, drew some 150,000 tourists a year before Syria’s civil war and is known to Syrians as the Pearl of the Desert.
Syrian state television broadcast footage from inside Palmyra’s famed museum, showing jagged pieces of sculptures on the ground and blanketed in dust.
Gains against IS
IS is under growing pressure from Syrian and Iraqi forces determined to retake bastions of its self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
On Thursday, the Iraqi army announced the launch of an offensive to eventually recapture second city Mosul, held by the jihadists since June 2014.
Russian forces, which intervened in support of longtime ally Assad last September, were heavily involved in the Palmyra offensive despite a major drawdown last week.
Russian warplanes carried out 40 combat sorties around Palmyra in the last 24 hours, striking 117 “terrorist targets” and killing 80 IS fighters, Moscow’s defence ministry said yesterday.
Putin telephoned Assad to congratulate the Syrian leader, adding that “successes such as the liberation of Palmyra would be impossible without Russia’s support,” a Kremlin spokesman said.
Assad said the victory was “fresh proof of the efficiency of the Syrian army and its allies in fighting terrorism”.
IS and its jihadist rival, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, are not party to a ceasefire in force across Syria since 27 February.
The truce has brought relative quiet to many areas across Syria, where more than 270,000 have been killed and millions had fled their homes in the last five years.
The Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that 363 civilians had been killed since the truce went into effect – the lowest monthly toll in four years.
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Here we go again, these banks are a law unto themselves and we keep letting them away with it
@James Wallace: An organised mass withdrawal of money from accounts would be the kick to the teeth the banks need, they’d lose millions in interest.
@Adam J:
It soars banks money to hold cash. Current interest paid to banks is negative.
Mass withdrawal would never happen anyway.
@sequoia: it couldn’t happen anyway. Only 8% of the world’s money is actually physical cash
@Adam J: Not a good idea. Don’t forget all the small businesses that needs them.
@Adam J: I’d have to put 2 million undery bed
The ombudsman may not name them, but we’ll find out soon enough which banks are doing this. Then perhaps we can have some naming and shaming. Not that the banks do shame…
@jamesdecay: Banks are back in profit. Bonuses are back. Do they really care?
@jamesdecay: They don’t care what people think of them……they are making a billion and year and laughing at people all with the ok for our government……we vote for it so we deserve it end of.
Are we surprised the mutants and vermin in the banks would do this…….just remember folks when the next bubble bursts and there is no soft landing, these shower of absolute low life dirt will be the first to get a bailout again like last time
Fair play to the ombudsman. Think his office are doing their best and the banks are trying to give them and the public the runaround
Went into my bank this morning to do my business the staff were not friendly and a lot of tension going around.I must avoid this in the future not good for the blood pressure.
@Marty from Sligo: You did remember to remove your balaclava, right?
@David Corrigan: 10/10
Had the banks faced proper sanctions for the fraud they knowingly engaged in they wouldn’t be trying to wriggle out of this now. No doubt Leo and his cohorts will believe the banks are not at fault. People are.
@Dave Doyle: this s not a Leo issue. It’s ownership is with FF and the Greens.
@John Hanrahan: This is 100% a Leo issue, he is the Taoiseach and his party are in power for nearly a decade and especially as he was the person who campaigned with “Not one more cent to Anglo” .
I am also 100% sure that Leo in all his wisdon brought through measures to ensure that what happened in the banks before could never happen again. He made some many stiring speache on the same, he hardly forgot now.
Every bank and bank employee should have a licence / fitness to practice etc. Doctors, Bookies have them. If they fail to perform fine/Suspend or revoke licence.
@DERMOT DE BARRA: https://www.centralbank.ie/regulation/how-we-regulate/fitness-probity
@DERMOT DE BARRA: eh, they do genius.
The way the regulator got around this deadline in the UK for PPI was basically to declare the sale as fraudulent, thus getting around the six year rule.( You can pursue a fraud case six years after the discovery of the fraud not the actual time the fraud occurred.) This then forced the banks to look at all the PPI sales that had been made and refund with interest the PPI charged. The regulator here did not do the same as s this would have been an additional kick after 2008. ( That decision should be judicially reviewed.)
.
@Sean Oige:
The CBI could make that call now, but there would be implications for PPI here with subsequent effects on banks balance sheets. As the CBI us the Prudential regulator as well as enforcing Consumer Protection, it never will make that call. Consumer protection must be taken away from the CBI so that consumers are protected properly without any prudential considerations muddying the waters.
Banks the parasites we were forced to bail out by Fianna Fail and Green government. Do not forget.
Why does the Government not charge the banks one billion a year for the bailout, ring fenced to go to the National Debt. Every insurance payment in this country contains a subscription to bail out the Insurance Companies that went broke. I know they would up their charges but, at least it would eventually get the nation debt into sustainable levels.
The ones objecting now should be arrested thrown in prison and the keys thrown away,they are a dirty shower of criminals.
The only time limit should longer than the life of the mortgage.
Switch away from Irish banks. N26 is an excellent option if you are willing to sacrifice being able to walk into a branch!
FG the landlord and bankers party Apathy towards the citizens of Ireland knows NO bounds…Allowing the banks who pay NO taxes to rape and pillage
Banks are this brazen because they know they will get away with it
Another mighty Monday full of scandals. Vote FFG
Varadkar. Do your job. Sort these banks. U aren’t there to promote your own personal agenda as u seen to thrive at.
have your say